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I started to go back to my chair, but then I turned and walked right up to Carter Ames’s table.
“May I, Carter?”
I picked up his Bible, flipping through the pages until I appeared to find the verse I was seeking in the book of Proverbs. No one needed to know I was quoting from memory:
“When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous.”
I closed the Good Book.
Chapter 5
CARTER AMES PUSHED his silver flask of bourbon toward my face. “Have a swig, Ben. You deserve it, son. Well done.”
What a sight for the funny pages we must have made—Ames barely five feet tall, me at six-four—standing side by side in the marble hallway outside the courtroom.
“No, thanks, Carter. I’d rather be sober when the verdict comes in.”
“I wouldn’t, if I was you.” His voice was a curdled mixture of phlegm and whiskey. As he lifted the flask to his mouth, I was surprised to see half-moons of sweat under his arms. In the courtroom he’d looked cool as a block of pond ice.
“Your summation was damn good,” he observed. “I think you had ’em going for a while there. But then you went and threw in that colored stuff. Why’d you have to remind them? You think they didn’t notice she’s black as the ace of spades?”
“I thought I saw one or two who weren’t buying your motive,” I said. “Only takes one to hang ’em up.”
“And twelve to hang her, don’t I know it.”
He took another swig from his flask and eased himself down to a bench. “Sit down, Ben. I want to talk to you, not your rear end.”
I sat.
“Son, you’re a fine young lawyer, Harvard trained and all, gonna make a finer lawyer one of these days,” he said. “But you still need to learn that Washington is a southern town. We’re every bit as southern as wherever you’re from down in Podunk, Mississippi.”
I grimaced and shook my head. “I just do what I think is right, Carter.”
“I know you do. And that’s what makes everybody think you’re nothing but a goddamned bleeding-heart fool and nigger-lover.”
Before I could defend—well, just about everything I believe in—a police officer poked his head out of the courtroom. “Jury’s coming back.”
Chapter 6
THE CUMBERSOME IRON SHACKLES around Gracie Johnson’s ankles clanked noisily as I helped her to her feet at the defense table.
“Thank you, Mr. Corbett,” she whispered.
Judge Warren gazed down on her as if he were God. “Mr. Foreman, has the jury reached a verdict in this case?” he asked.
“Yes, we have, Your Honor.”
Like every lawyer since the Romans invented the Code of Justinian, I had tried to learn something from the jurors’ faces as they filed into the courtroom—the haberdasher, the retired schoolteacher, the pale young man who was engaged to Congressman Chapman’s daughter and had cracked a tentative smile during my summation.
Several of them were looking directly at Gracie, which was supposed to be a good sign for a defendant. I decided to take it that way and said a hopeful little prayer.
The judge intoned, “How find you in the matter of murder against Grace Johnson?”
The foreman rose in a deliberate manner, then in a strong, clear voice he said, “We the jury find the defendant guilty as charged.”
The courtroom erupted with exclamations, some sobs, even an ugly smattering of applause.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
